How I Became a Spinner
I like to share my story of how I came to spinning to help encourage new spinners. When we come to a new skill with curiosity, that’s when exciting things happen.
Me as a bird.
I grew up in a small town in an era before the ease of internet information. I had no access to fiber groups and our small-town library certainly didn't have any books that would help me learn spinning. I didn't even have a concept that you could make your own yarn.
I was raised with crochet. My grandmother crocheted and she taught me while she was still alive. We also had a neighbor down the road, an old woman who I called Granny Mayor. From the age of 7, I would walk up the dirt road to Granny Mayor's house and sit with her on her screened porch. I'd carry a tote bag of yarn and crochet hooks with me and I would listen to her talk and she'd occasionally help me with my stitching.
One day, when I was in high school, I was playing with some cheap acrylic yarn from Walmart. I remember it was $0.87 per skein at the time (really awful stuff, the acrylic of today is far nicer). And I was sitting there, twisting and untwisting the yarn, just playing around. And I started to wonder why it stayed together.
After a bit of brainstorming, I found a candle stub, a coat hanger, and some duct tape and MacGyvered my first spindle. I didn't have a word for it at the time, but now I would call it a bottom whorl drop spindle. I also didn't have wool. All I had available to me was acrylic polyfill, which I used to fill handmade stuffed animals. That is what I made my first yarn from.
My curiosity was sated, at least until I was in my mid-20s in college. I rediscovered spinning and made the realization that it was an art form all on its own. I realized that I loved it. I was excited and passionate.
It was at that point, I decided I was going to be an expert on it. Because why not? I borrowed from the book Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell, the concept of the "10,000 hour rule," the assertion that the key to achieving true expertise in any skill is simply a matter of practicing, albeit in the correct way, for at least 10,000 hours.
In reality, 10,000 hours is an arbitrary number, but it felt like a good goal at the time. Research became a part-time job for me. I spent hours reading about spinning, practicing spinning, experimenting with spinning.
I tracked my progress and you know what I found? I didn't feel like an expert after 10,000 hours of research. Surprise! I had more questions and even more to learn.
In fact, it was around this time that I was dropping some samples off to Jacey Boggs Faulkner for an article in Ply magazine. She asked me if I was going to apply to teach at PlyAway and I froze up. Of course not! People like Maggie Casey, Deb Robson, Galena Khmeleva, and Judith Mackenzie taught at conferences like PlyAway. What did I have of value to share?
It took me years to finally feel comfortable in my own skin as a spinning teacher. Even now, I still suffer from imposter syndrome before every single conference and every time I submit a finished article to a magazine. But I always come home feeling empowered, excited, and ready to do it all again.
The truth is we all have something to offer, even if we don’t immediately see it in ourselves. It doesn’t take 10,000 hours to find your passion and your pathway. Sometimes it just takes that one special person to point out the path.
